March 30, 2020TOP: AMERICAN STOCK / GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: RIC TAPIA / AP
antitrust investigation against these companies, trying
to figure out if they were colluding to push up the price
of their vehicles. (When I asked one of those companies,
Honda, to provide comment for this article, it declined.)
The anti-environmentalists surrounding Trump prob-
ably believe that in revoking the 1970 waiver, they will
be able, in one bold stroke, to stymie those automakers
willing to cut deals with California, as well as those states
aligning their standards with California’s.
Third, from the beginning of his administration,
Trump has attacked California’s signature policy ini-
tiatives and triumphs—on the environment, on health
care, on immigration—as a way to punish the state for
being a self-proclaimed center of resistance to his pres-
idency. Trump has repeatedly attacked Governor Gavin
Newsom, mocked the state’s political representatives in
Washington, and even threatened to withhold Federal
Emergency Management Agency assistance in the wake
of California’s devastating wildfires.
With the administration looking for ways to weaken
the federal rules, the NHTSA, according to sources I’ve
talked to, urged the EPA to revoke California’s five-
decade-old Clean Air Act waiver, arguing that the state
was illegally using emissions standards as a way to split
the national vehicle market in two, by forcing manu-
facturers to sell more fuel efficient vehicles not only in
California but also in the dozen-plus other states that
were following its lead.
The EPA yanked the state’s waiver last September. In
a gloating tweet preempting the announcement, Trump
wrote, “Many more cars will be produced under the new
and uniform standard, meaning significantly more JOBS,
JOBS, JOBS! Automakers should seize this opportunity
because without this alternative to California, you will be
out of business.”
California and its allies responded by filing yet an-
other lawsuit to protect its regulations and vowing to
continue the fight to enforce its higher standards. The
Trump administration, Becerra argues, “doesn’t have a
right to undo a federal policy or change a federal law
simply because there’s an occupant in the White House
who thinks he can. Until we have a legal conclusion to
this, we plan to enforce the law.”C
alifornia’s clean air act waiver and the care-
fully negotiated standards that it helped lock in
place during the Obama presidency are import-
ant parts of a larger package of policies the state
has adopted in recent years to reduce smog and
asthma rates and to lower CO 2 emissions. In the Trump
era, with the federal government at best AWOL and at
worst malicious when it comes to mitigating pollution
and climate change, California’s efforts have been partic-
ularly important. In many ways the Golden State, rather
than Washington, is now where the global community
looks when trying to engage the United States in envi-
ronmental initiatives.
Another part of the package is California’s ZEV pro-
gram, which requires car companies to ensure that an
increasingly large percentage of the cars they sell in the
state are electric or fuel cell vehicles. The administrationis targeting this mandate, too, and if Trump wins reelec-
tion this November, it will almost certainly be disman-
tled as we head into the crucial post-2025 years, when the
auto industry has to be radically reshaped if global CO 2
reduction targets are to be met. “It’s the heart and soul
of one of California’s major programs to meet its climate
change targets,” says UCLA’s Carlson.
California has also developed a state-of-the-art cap-
and-trade system, which has been expanded in the past
seven years to include a landmark agreement with the
Canadian province of Quebec. In October the Trump
administration sued to block this agreement, arguing that
California has no authority to cut inter nation al deals.
To protect its edifice of laws and regulations, Cali-
fornia has put together a crack team of environmental
lawyers who spend more and more of their time litigating
against the federal government. They are working with
the attorneys general from states that follow California’s
standards but also with some others that don’t but believe
there’s an important federalist principle at stake in pre-
serving California’s waiver.
Colorado recently moved to align itself with Cali-
fornia’s standards. State Attorney General Phil Weiser
argues, “The letter and spirit of the Clean Air Act is
cooperative federalism, where states are given flexibility
to meet goals under the act.” He says Trump’s withdrawal
of the waiver is “an affront to federalism. I believe we’re
going to get an initial court decision. I believe we have a far
better argument. What happened here is unprecedented.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says, “Even
if Michigan hasn’t yet adopted California’s [greenhouse
gas] emissions standards, the two cases I have joined with
California push back against federal overreach.”
Becerra is confident that this grand alliance of states
will be able to block the administration’s efforts to evis-
cerate the Clean Air Act and roll back other vital environ-
mental protections. “We think we’ve got facts, science,
law, and history on our side,” he says. “We lean forward.
We’re not going to backslide. It’s worked for us.” As for
his ability to block the withdrawal of California’s waiver,
he points to the state’s filing, in its independent capacity,“We think
we’ve got
facts, sci-
ence, law,
and history
on our side.
We lean for-
ward. We’re
not going to
backslide.
It’s worked
for us.”
— California Attorney
General Xavier BecerraLos Angeles then and
now: The city’s sky-
line in the late 1960s
(above), before the
Clean Air Act out-
lined more stringent
restrictions, and this
February (below).